Paisley: Hey, everyone. Me again, Paisley, imperfect and
today, just like every day, I want to just jump right in.
Something that's been standing out to me lately is we've been
talking about President Nelson's a sisters, and how we can help
make ourselves better, how we can what we can work on the
relationship. Thing has been standing out to me, being able
to work on our relationships, and building relationships,
specifically with those who are not members of the church. And
remember, I don't know if you remember that quote, we talked
about, a quote from Sister Eubank weeks ago. She was
actually summarizing President Kimball, President Kimball's
quote that President Nelson re quoted, and then she re quoted
about how the church's growth would be largely because of the
relationships that the Sisters of the church are building with
other women outside the church. And she gave us these two bullet
points. She said it will be the good relationships of women that
will trigger much of the major growth coming to the church in
the years ahead. And she said the friendships that Relief
Society women, young women and primary girls build with
sincere, faithful, godly women and girls of other faiths and
beliefs will be a significant force in how the church grows in
the last days. So she gave us those two bullet points, and
this whole relationship thing just has
just kind of been tickling my brain. So how do we build these
relationships? And rather than just jumping into a whole bunch
of quotes, I kind of I wanted to take a different approach and
just think about it
from a common sense perspective. I do have some quotes, and I
will share them later, but first, I just kind of wanted to
think about it from like as common sense. So
we know, we know the golden rule, right, do unto others as
you would have others do unto you, or in other words, treat
others with kindness, be nice to them. Jesus gave us the two
great commandments, love God, and then love your neighbor as
thyself as yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself.
And so that tells us again, love other people, treat them with
kindness. And then we could paraphrase King Benjamin from
the Book of Mormon and come to the conclusion that to love
others is to serve others.
And then, I don't know about the rest of you, but there's a
there's been this phrase that's been popping up in my life,
specifically over maybe the last year or so, maybe not even that
long, but people say it to me all the time, or I hear them say
it to each other, or I've heard I just, I keep hearing this
phrase, give yourself grace. Or give them some grace.
Give it to yourself. Give it to others. But show, show grace,
show latitude, give people the benefit of the doubt. As you
interact with your friends, do so with kindness and compassion,
giving them the benefit of the doubt and letting them,
letting them do or get or say what they need,
and
then don't assume the worst. Try to trust people. Trust people
until they give you a reason not to.
I usually do things the other way around.
I wait, I hold trust until they've earned it. But,
and that's something that I've actually been working on for
years, is try and trust, trust people until they give me a
reason not to not quite there yet, but I'm working on that.
And so as I was putting together all of these, as I was putting
together my thoughts for this, I did come across an article from
August 2018 in the Liahona Ensign back then. And if you
remember in it was in April of 2018 when visiting teaching and
home teaching was switched to ministering. And I don't want to
make I don't want to make this about ministering. I want to
keep this on relationship building. I just want to share
this one statement from that article, and this is what it
opens up with
the article, by the way, is called building meaningful
relationships again, August of 2018 it says the invitation to
minister to others is an opportunity to build caring
relationships with them, the kind of relationship that would
make them comfortable asking for or accepting our help when we
have made the effort to develop that kind of relationship, God
is able to change lives on both sides of the relationship.
So while that specifically is talking about ministering.
I don't think that it's exclusive. I think that as we
work to build our relationship, and we put in the effort, we put
in some genuine,
loving, compassionate effort, then the Lord can change both
our life and the life of the person with whom we are building
this relationship.
This article offers five points for us to focus on as we build
these relationships, and remember how we started out just
a couple minutes ago with common sense, right?
Be nice, share like the things that we learn in kindergarten.
These five points are not things that are new. They're not things
you've never heard before. They're simple, easy,
easy, so simple and easy are not the same, right? They're these.
These five points are very simple. They are not always
going to be easy. Number one, for example, is spend time
together. How much time do you have to spend with your friends.
I have three little kids. I don't have much time to spend
with my friends. In fact, a couple of my friends were over
on a Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago to work on some
family history stuff together. And I was mentioning how, like,
you know, when you're in junior high or high school or
elementary school, as you're growing up as a kid, you think
your best friend is somebody that you spend all of your time
with. You have sleepovers at their house. You go with their
family out to dinner, or you you go do things with them. You
you're with them all the time. But then, when you get older and
you have your own family, when? When are you going to do that?
She's driving her kids to soccer practice, and I'm driving my
kids to piano lessons, and like when
so simple, not necessarily easy, but in this article, I really
liked how it doesn't say that we have to show up at their house
every day or even every month. It boils it down to letting
people know that you care. And one of the quotes from this
article said, talk to them at church, use whatever additional
means makes sense, such as email, Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, Skype, phone calls or sending a card. The point is, be
present in their life,
if that means that you can show up at their front door. Cool. Go
show up at their front door if it doesn't find a different way.
But it has to be genuine, and it has to be sincere. You can see
through it. If I showed up at your house and it was like, hey,
I want to be your friend,
you could see right through it. If I was just showing up at your
house to be your friend, because I wanted to,
I don't know I wanted you to bake me something, so I'm going
to show up at your house and be your friend until you bake me
that thing like
you're going to see right through that everybody else is
going to see right through that if you do that to them. So just
don't be genuine and be sincere. Don't force it. But also make
sure you give it some time. You're not going to make friends
with everybody right away. I have said it many times, I am an
acquired taste. I do not always make friends right away. Usually
people think that I hate them right off the bat.
It's just the blessing of my face.
So it's important to give it some time and be genuine.
The second point was to learn about them. Write things down if
you need to. My husband is really, really good at this
whenever he's talking to somebody new, and he whenever he
gets to a point in a relationship where he's like, I
really like this person.
I feel like they're my friend.
He started this with his home teaching families. Again, I'm
not making this about home teaching
he started, but this is how it started. He started it with
them, but he finds out people's birthdays are important, days,
birthdays, anniversaries. He's got the birthdays for the next
door neighbors in his phone, and every year, when they come up,
he sends them a text, and sometimes it's the only text he
sends them. Every year, he'll kind of chuckle sometimes and be
like, Oh, darn it. The last time I sent this person a text was
last year on their birthday, you know, as he's typing it into his
phone, whatever.
But he's really good at letting them know, Hey, I have not
forgotten about you. You are still important enough in my
life for me to send you a birthday text, and he thinks
about him all day. He'll, he'll send me a text, hey, just
remember it's so and so's birthday today, because he knows
I, I that's just not my thing. So he'll, he'll send me a text
and tell me to to send it to
so learn about people and remember what they care about.
Number three is communicate with caring. And to quote the
article, it says building meaningful relationships
requires us to go beyond the superficial. Listening is a
critical part of communicating that you care. When you listen
carefully, your opportunity to help others come into Christ
increases as you gain understanding and insight into
their needs and.
They feel loved, understood and safe. That one I think, is
they're all very applicable to building relationships with
people who are not of our faith and not of our religion, not of
our background. Building meaningful relationships
requires that we listen, pay attention, put the birthday in
your phone and be able to come back to that information later,
which is going to come in handy with number five. Number four is
appreciate differences as well as commonalities. I have said
this 1000 times in my life. We were not and I'll keep saying it
till the day I die, we were not put here on this earth one
person at a time. We know that this earth is a test. We know
that we are being tested and tried and refined so that we can
become more like our heavenly father, but he didn't send us
here one at a time.
It's not an individual exam that we're trying to pass. This is a
group project, if you will, and we can benefit from what we have
in common, and we can benefit from our differences. So the
example that came to my mind as I was kind of thinking through
this a little bit earlier, we have a set of missionaries in
our ward. One is from a town in Utah I've never heard of, and
now can't remember the name of and the other one is from South
Korea. Very, very different, very different backgrounds. In
South Korea, you're required to, you're required to provide
military service
as soon as you turn 18. And so the elder from South Korea, he's
23 he's already he's done his service to his country, and now
he's serving a mission, because it's important to him. So these
two elders have something very, very, very important in common,
their testimony of Jesus Christ, and their testimony of the
restored gospel, their testimony of Joseph Smith, of the Book of
Mormon, Latter Day profits, all of those things they have, all
of those things in common.
Their upbringing is very different.
Their age is very different. One is 18, one is 23 that's a that's
kind of a big gap. It's getting a little bit smaller when you
get to that age, but it's still, it's still a significant gap. My
husband left and went on his mission at 23 after he served in
the Marine Corps, and they used to call him grandpa, like it's
it's a thing, right? But they can both benefit from the
differences and the commonalities, just like we can.
We can benefit from the differences and commonalities
from anybody, people that we go to church with, people that we
don't go to church with. We were not placed on this earth alone
to go through this test alone. We have a community. We have a
village.
And then number five, be sensitive to the people that you
serve, and serve them in ways that they need.
The only example that is coming to mind is blueberries. I do not
like blueberries. I don't I've never liked blueberries. They're
even worse when they're put in some nasty blueberry muffin
that's been sitting in a package on a shelf. Do not bring me
blueberry muffins. I do not like them. Sam, I am
so but some very well meaning person could show up at my door
with blueberry muffins, and I would smile, and I would nod,
and I would say, thank you. Thank you very much for my
blueberry muffins, and I would appreciate them, and I would
feed them to my kids, but I would not eat them
that the service isn't wasted on me, and I still hope and pray
that that person would get the blessings that they deserve for
going outside of themselves and doing something kind for someone
else. It did not necessarily bless my life.
Serve others. Be sensitive enough to the people around you
that you can serve them in the ways that they need to be
served. You can be there to this is a quote from the article. You
can be there to provide comfort, support and needed help when
there is an emergency illness or urgent situation, but in too
many relationships, we are reactive,
and it's possible to be proactive. When we're paying
attention to our friends and we're spending time with them
and we're communicating and we're listening, we can be
proactive.
Case in point on Sunday was not having a super fantastic day.
And there was this one particular friend who I knew if
she looked at my face, or if I looked her in the eyes, she
would know. So I just kind of avoided her on Sunday was just
like.
I don't I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to deal
with it. I just want to, I want to be here at church. I want to
feel the Spirit in my Sunday school class, and then I want to
go home and take a nap. Or I want there's no taking a nap
around here on Sunday, we had a baptism after church. There was
plenty to do. But I just, I don't want to talk about it, I
don't want to deal with it. I will be fine, and so I just kind
of avoided her, and she texted me later that day.
She knew I didn't even have to make eye contact with her. I
passed her in the hallway one time. She was talking to someone
else and I was talking to my child,
she just knew because she listens and she pays attention
and she's learned things about me, and so she texted me later
that day and pulled it all out of me, and within an hour, hour
and a half, I felt 1000 times better.
I could have avoided all of that if I had just talked to her in
the first place.
Okay, none of these five. Let's just do a quick review. Number
one, spend time together. Number two, learn about them. Number
three, communicate with caring. Four, appreciate differences as
well as commonalities. And number five, serve none of these
five relationship builders are exclusive to members of the
Church of Jesus, Christ of Latter Day, saints. None of them
are exclusive to your family. None of them are exclusive only
to your best friends that you already have. These are ways
that we can build relationships with anyone.
And as we pay attention, heavenly Father will point out
the people that he has placed us in the path of and we can help
them okay with that. I'm just going to close by reminding you
that self improvement is a journey that we take together.
So let's continue to support and inspire each other along the
way. Thank you so much for being here with me. I appreciate your
time.